November 13, 2013

Yes al-Qaeda Hates You

For the most part, Abu Zubaydah is firm in his beliefs about the nature of the enemy that the mujahedeen are facing. After Kabul and the Najibullah government fell in 1992 and the Taliban took over in 1996, more Afghans arrived in the training camps. While most of them are “fit to be a soldier or a warrior,” he finds them still in the anti-communist mind-set and not embracing the outward-facing position he at this point has assumed.

“Most of them … know their enemy to be the communists, but they do not know the enmity of the brother, which is America, or the idea of democracy,” Abu Zubaydah writes. “Some of them love America as a symbol of freedom, and this is the most awful thing.”

n 1998, under the banner of the World Islamic Front, bin Laden and Zawahiri issued a statementwith heads of likeminded movements, assailing the United States for its “eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring state (to Israel), and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan … and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the (Arabian) Peninsula.

Their "fatwa" called on all Muslims to kill Americans and their allies — civilian and military. “This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together … and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.’”